General

Wow … it’s been a while. This place is kind of dusty and has an odd odor, but everything still works.

Anyway, no real news, but that will change shortly, hopefully in the next few days.

Stay tuned, folks.

Between all of the parties and sleeping and eating, I actually did something of substance. I attended the Town Hall meeting on Wednesday night.

The place was full, and a bit anxious. People had ideas that they were just dying to share, and share they did. A few wanted to either move it to New York or Boston. One person suggested Texas, that haven of Mac-heads. One suggested that they move it around to different locations. One woman talked about gaming and the lack of it at Macworld the last few years. I think the phrase “Last year was a pathetic joke” was used.

While these are all worthwhile ideas, I suppose, I have to admit that none of them got me excited.

Macworld for me is about interacting with our customers. It is really the only place to do that year after year. For example, this year, even though we do not have a booth, I have been stopped more than once in the hallway and told in no uncertain terms how they like (or not like) our products. You just can’t get that kind of feedback anywhere else.

Without Apple being involved, I am not sure who is going to show up. Like it or not, Apple makes Macworld Expo. It shouldn’t be that way, but that’s how it is. I am afraid though without Apple’s participation, Macworld is not going to go on after this year.

And that will be a real shame.

I can’t say that I wasn’t too surprised at the lack of excitement in this years show. People that I talked to before the keynote were not expecting much. And what do you know, Apple delivered on that. The new stuff is nice, but not earth shattering. That’s got to be one of the reasons Apple is pulling out: they want to be able to control their message. Products will come out when they are ready, and not forced out to meet a show deadline.

Makes sense if you are Apple, doesn’t it?

More than a few people around me were talking about the lack of all talk concerning Snow Leopard. Not one mention that I can remember. But hey, iTunes talk is exciting, right? Right?

What really surprised me though was after the keynote. Usually, the foot traffic, especially near Apple’s booth, is almost overwhelming. Not so much this year. It’s a little slow, to be honest. In the Special Interests Pavilion, where we would normally reside, there are a few gaping holes where there would normally be a booth. Or several, actually.

OK, so I am not painting a rosy picture here. But, there is still some interesting things to see and do.

No really, there is.

I arrived very early this morning only to see the rain I was so desperately hoping would not fall. Being San Francisco, I knew that was a pipe dream, but sometimes you just have to root for the impossible.

I made the rounds in the afternoon. Seems that there was a bit of news about Mr. Jobs that both perked people up and annoyed them just a bit.

Good for Steve for taking some time off. He can get healthy now in relative peace and quiet. Honestly, I don’t know why he was forced into saying something. I mean, I know why, but I just don’t understand human nature. Why can’t people just leave it alone?

I picked up my badge and I have to tell you, it was a bit weird to not go into the hall to set up the booth. That’s because we did not rent a booth this time. We thought long and hard about it, but in the end the expense just isn’t worth the return this year. Trade shows are just not what the used to be. Before you could think about breaking even or maybe even making a bit of money. Now, you really don’t have a chance. This is probably why Apple pulled out of all tradeshows. Too much money, not enough return. It’s a shame, really, but understandable.

So I am here to represent Nisus and to do all of the talking. That should scare plenty of folks in the office, I would think. Plus, it will be fun to see all of the new stuff. That is, if there is any new stuff.

We will see soon enough.

It is Thanksgiving Day here in the USA, or as my English friend says, “You are Welcome Day.”

This is the day where we get to stuff ourselves full of food, watch football, and be more lazy than usual. There is another thing we celebrate, but that gets lost in the inevitable food-induced coma.

We will need a few days to recover, so we will be off until Monday. I will need at least that long to lose the weight I will surely gain today.

For those of you in the USA and elsewhere who enjoy this holiday, please enjoy the day and be safe.

A silly but funny little video for typography nerds. Looks to be a bit of viral marketing, but entertaining all the same!

A very dedicated user of Nisus Writer Pro (and our French localizer), Philippe Demoulin, has created a new forum for International users of Nisus.

You can find the new forum at http://nisuswriter.phpbb3now.com/.

Philippe also has a French Nisus blog. If I understand my French, and I don’t, it has tips, tricks and other useful information.

Check it out!

A neat calligraphy video filmed live and sped up. The artist’s website also has some very impressive images of “light calligraphy“.

Well, it was fun while it lasted, but the whole “Social Networking” craze is now officially over. It died the day that Hoffspace was launched.

I already have some pretty severe back pains, but the idea of a David Hasselhoff social network is going to cause me more pain than any back spasm can give me.

I got this lovely warning today as Time Machine was backing up my iMac:

My drive isn’t that large (160 gig WD Passport) and I probably should get a larger drive. But, eventually Time Machine will eat that drive as well.

Maybe it is time to look for alternative backup solutions.

Here we see the boss inspecting the updated Nisus Writer Pro manuals.

He is a very tough editor. Nothing escapes his keen eyes.

I try not to link to things that have been linked everywhere, but this one is just too good to pass up.

In case you have not seen this, the Seattle PI’s Todd Bishop posted the full text of an email that Bill Gates wrote to Jim Allchin (then VP of the MS Platform Group, which was responsible for XP and Vista, and servers I believe) and others.

Seems Bill had a lot of trouble downloading MS Moviemaker from the Microsoft.com site and let loose on the folks responsible. Man, I would hate to be on the receiving end of this rant.

Here is the money quote: “What an absolute mess.”

OS X has a lot of issues, but after reading this, I am glad I primarily use Macs.

Whenever I pass through my local Cost Plus World Market, a place of wonderful things, I always take a walk through the candy aisle. Obviously we’re pocky fans around here, but I’ve always been more a gummy man myself. It might be my German heritage, but indeed Haribo macht mich froh.

So upon a recent visit a happy “oooh” (or perhaps OOo) was uttered when I beheld the king of gummy bears:

That greeting card is standard size mind you. Each bear packs in a whopping 105 grams of sugar- let the gummy feast begin!

Well, he isn’t actually local, but he did work here.

Charles Jolley, formerly of Nisus, creator of LinkBack, currently at SproutIt and Apple, is making a lot of news these days. He and the .Mac team have been pretty busy over the last 18 months or so, working on MobileMe, the .Mac replacement. They are using SproutCore, which is something Charles was working on before joining Apple. SproutCore is a javascript framework that allows you to build web apps with very little code.

Now that Charles has made the big time, I just wish he would pay me the money he owes me. I mean, I don’t think $1.63 is too much to ask for, you know?

Hey, what do you know? Snow Leopard is real! I had my doubts, but I was wrong. Happily so.

It’s too bad that Apple didn’t reveal much about 10.6 in the Jobs keynote. From the stuff that was revealed, though, I find the Exchange support to be the most interesting. Sounds like Apple is subtly going after the business, or Enterprise market. By supporting Exchange out of the box, you eliminate one huge barrier to using Macs at a large corporation.

Effectively, they are beating Microsoft over the head with their own tool.

Mind you, this is a company that has said repeatedly that it really isn’t interested in the Enterprise market. Right.

They have a funny way of showing their disinterest.

Photo by Milan Trykar. Courtesy of Snow Leopard Trust.

So here I was, trying to do something to heal the rift between Heidi and Lauren on The Hills. Suddenly, I realized it was almost time for WWDC.

Mind you, I wasn’t really that interested, since it seemed to me all of the chatter was about the iPhone. When people discussed the conference, all I could hear was “iPhone blah, blah, blah .Mac blah, blah, blah” and I quickly tuned out. That is, until I read about the supposed name of Mac OS X 10.6, or Snow Leopard.

According to this article, Snow Leopard is an evolutionary update (hence the code name), with the focus being not on new features, but stability and reliability. And, it could be all Cocoa.

And, in the biggest news, 10.6 marks the end of PowerPC support. Which means that those machines would be stuck on 10.5 in perpetuity.

While I would love to believe this, I don’t know. Seems a bit soon to end support for PowerPC machines. Plus, all Cocoa I don’t see happening for a while, if at all.

I guess we will find out tomorrow, but this sure does make WWDC a lot more interesting, at least for me.

Happy days are here again! Nisus Writer Pro 1.1 is now out and about. Thank you to everyone who contributed bug reports, feedback, and rants during the public beta period.

You can download this new version from our Pro download page. You can read about all of the new features, fixes, enhancements, and localizations in the release notes.

The system requirements are Mac OS X 10.4 and above.

Nisus Writer Pro 1.1 is a free update for licensed users of previous versions of Nisus Writer Pro.

So head on over to the Pro page and download that update right now!

Apparently management thinks that I am slacking off. No one has told me this, no one has to. I can sense it. And before you accuse me of being paranoid, let me just say that I am paranoid.

Having said that, let me introduce you to my shadow. He is grey, with four legs and big eyes. He doesn’t talk much, he just watches me. He won’t even tell me his name! He just sits in the chair next to me, watching, waiting for me to make a mistake. He even sleeps with one eye open, just in case I fall asleep, or watch a movie, or play a game. I know he is filing reports to ownership … he is very sneaky, this one.

Well, he won’t catch me. I am working like I have never worked before: hard. This spy in the house of Nisus will not get the better of me. I won’t give him the satisfaction!

Now where is my Call of Duty DVD?

Hey, what do you know: the World Wide Web as we know it is fifteen years old.

Happy Birthday, WWW!

I can remember when we first saw an Intel-based iMac in the office. Our jaws dropped when we saw how fast the thing booted up. Here is a consumer iMac, parked right next to a dual G5, and it just left that machine in the dust.

It was at that point that we knew our PowerPC machines were not long for the office. This has come to pass, as we all use Intel Macs and the PowerPC Macs are used as test machines only.

But I wasn’t so sure that those newfangled Intel Macs were going to catch on. After all, up to that point, Intel was the enemy. It was almost traitorous to consider anything other than a PowerPC powered Mac, right?

Well, I was dead wrong. Apparently Mac aficionados have embraced Intel as their own. According to the stats provided by the Omnigroup, a whopping 83.5 percent of their customers are using Intel-based Macs.

Excluding the new Mac users, which seem to be coming over in droves (Thanks, Microsoft!), that seems to mean that many of you die hard Mac users have dropped your PowerPC machines for Intel Macs.

I knew that eventually people would switch, but I didn’t think it would be this fast.

See, this is why I don’t gamble.